The restaurant industry is an increasingly competitive market. Owners are looking for ways to retain repeat loyal customers and increase customer visits. Most food establishments have a set menu and repeat customers tend to have their set of favorite items that they continually order from on each visit. Additionally, when a customer orders an item a certain way, they will order it that way most if not all of the time. For example, someone who does not like onions will always order their entrees with no onions.
Today, customers visit a restaurant, read through the menu and verbally tell an employee what they would like. On each visit the repeat customer must still read the menu to remember exactly what the item is called or its ordering number. They must also continue to tell employees how they like it on every visit. High employee turnover is a problem for most food stores, as well as serving customers as quickly as possible. Under these conditions, employees are not able to recognize loyal, repeat customers, remember their favorite orders, and provide a high level of service to these valuable customers. Even when a visitor to a restaurant is able successfully communicate an order, the order is often not accurately communicated to food preparers, resulting in an erroneous order, a frustrated customer, and a loss for the restaurant, which often must discard the first order and prepare the consumer's order a second time.
These deficiencies, while discussed in the context of the food industry, exist in various industries where consumers periodically order items from the same vendor, and particularly where the consumer often places the same or similar orders with a given vendor.
Several methods are needed to remedy theses deficiencies in the art. First, what is needed is a method to facilitate consumer ordering by creating a current order for a consumer based on one or more past orders associated with the consumer. Likewise, there is a need for a method to facilitate ordering by suggesting order items based on a consumer's past order history. There is also a need for a method which allows a consumer to define and name one or more preferred orders, enabling efficient and personalized product ordering. Finally, there is a need for an interactive system which provides a platform for the various methods useful to remedy deficiencies in the art.